Delightful Pastries opened in the heavily Polish neighborhood of Jefferson Park in 1998 and is a destination for Chicagoans looking to indulge on Fat Thursday or Tuesday.
Chicago's Delightful Pastries Makes 40,000 Pączki This Time of Year. Take a Look Behind the Scenes
Kathleen Hinkel
February 13, 2024
Custard pączki topped with chocolate at Delightful Pastries in Jefferson Park. Credit: Kathleen Hinkel for WTTW
Get more recipes, food news, and stories by signing up for our Deep Dish newsletter.
It’s that time of year when bakeries around Chicago are hard at work preparing the beloved, decadent Polish pastries known as pączki – a type of filled, deep-fried, donut-like treat traditionally enjoyed by Poles on Fat Thursday before the solemn Christian period of Lent. Chicago, with its large Polish population, has turned the more widely known Mardi Gras into an unofficial holiday devoted to this Polish indulgence: Pączki Day.
To satisfy that passion for pączki during the depths of winter, bakeries across the city prepare thousands of pączki. Some mostly cater to non-Polish Chicagoans on Pączki Day; others, like the Polish-owned Delightful Pastries on Lawrence Avenue in Jefferson Park, are beloved by both Poles and non-Poles, and must therefore prepare for crowds on both the Thursday and Tuesday before Lent.
Photographer Kathleen Hinkel visited Delightful Pastries to get a behind-the-scenes look at the skillful preparation of tens of thousands of artful pączki in the days leading up to Lent.
Polish-born owner Dobra Bielinski experiences a boost in sales each year before the two Pączki Days. She estimates that the bakery sells about 40,000 pączki at this time of year, including these specialty espresso chocolate custard ones topped with Belgian chocolate ganache.
Pączki are made of a yeasted bread dough that is filled with various sweet jams, custards, chocolates, and other delights.
Like many other treats enjoyed during the Carnival season of Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, they were traditionally a way to use up the sugar and fats that would be forbidden during Lent, a last hurrah before weeks of abstinence.
Pączki dough is fried in oil before being filled, in this case in a large batch by Olha Burtak.
Denser than an American doughnut, pączki have recently become popular among non-Polish people, particularly in cities with large Polish populations such as Chicago.
Now everyone from Polish bakeries to home bakers to doughnut shops offer pączki around Fat Tuesday.
Some bakeries offer them year-round while others only make them at this time of year. Delightful Pastries always has a few flavors available, but drastically expands its filling selections and volume for Pączki Day.
Among the flavors are lemon, vanilla, and chocolate, all of which can come spiked with a hint of alcohol.
Traditional flavors are custard, rose, plum, raspberry, and apricot.
But Bielinski is a French-trained chef who draws on her world travels to include flavors such as passion fruit as well.
“My food has no borders,” Bielinski says.
"Use your surroundings and make things that taste amazing," she continues. "That’s what makes American food amazing – because we pull from everything.”
The fresh strawberry and whipped cream pączki are the most popular variety at Delightful Pastries.
Pączki, stocked here by Radek Hawryszczuk, are just one of the many treats Bielinski and her team prepare year-round, from croissants to breads to cookies to cakes. She is constantly experimenting with her desserts.
But the business is not an easy one, despite certain times of year when the bakery is flooded with customers. "I can’t live off of Fat Tuesday, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas," Bielinski says.
Over the years, many of the other commercial businesses surrounding her bakery have shuttered, making things hard for the shop to stay open after more than 25 years, she says.
“There’s nobody on this block," she says. "It’s been hard. Everything is boarded up. It’s really kind of sad. It’s taken a real downturn."
"There was a deli and people would come and multi-shop. Now, only people that know about us come. We might have to move." Even if Pączki Day has been adopted by Chicagoans as an unofficial holiday, it's still just one (or two) days out of an entire year.
